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Since Washington was granted the right to hold local elections in 1973, the city’s ties to Congress have often triggered anxiety. But this election is particularly fraught as federal prosecutors allege that Gray knew of an illegal fundraising scheme during his last race and could indict the mayor.

Gray has vigorously denied any wrongdoing and insists he won’t step down — even if he is indicted.

It’s a level of drama that hasn’t surrounded a citywide election at least since the days of Marion Barry’s administration, a period in which Congress established a board to oversee the city’s finances. Congress has taken a somewhat more hands-off approach in recent years, and for now key lawmakers expect it to stay that way.

“I realize there is a controversy, but we stay out of the election,” said House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), whose panel has jurisdiction over the city’s affairs. “If there is a new mayor, we would hope that he or she would continue the same level [of communication] we’ve enjoyed under” Gray.

Washington’s delegate to Congress, Eleanor Holmes Norton, said the city should resolve the controversy on its own.

“District officials and the people of the District are attending to their own business well, and the mayoral election should have no effect on congressional business,” a spokesperson for Holmes Norton said in a statement. “The congresswoman is pleased that the Congress and its oversight committees have observed home rule and have allowed the District to work out its own issues through the electoral and legal processes.”

More than 40 years after Washington won home rule, the city’s mayor must still grapple with congressional efforts to influence local issues. All city spending must be approved by Congress. Republicans teamed with some conservative Democrats in 2010 in an effort to change the city’s gun laws. The city was barred from spending its own money on abortion in a 2011 budget deal. And Democrats — including President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid — refused to cooperate with a GOP-led plan to free D.C.’s budget from the overall shutdown in October 2013.

Given all the ways in which Congress still has a role in civic affairs, candidates to replace Gray are seizing on his legal troubles to question whether he can maintain positive relationships on Capitol Hill.

“Fair or not, the District really has to make sure that when we’re talking to the Congress that we have our house in order. I think it’s very important that we get a fresh start at the top,” said D.C. Council member Muriel Bowser, who has surged to a small lead or a dead heat with Gray in recent polls.

In an interview at her Georgia Avenue campaign headquarters, Bowser said a perception that D.C. is still a poorly run, corrupt city would make it hard to advocate for more autonomy.

“It makes it harder for us not only to go to the Hill,” she said. “It makes it harder for us to go to Wall Street. It makes it harder for us to go to investors in Silicon Valley. It makes it harder for us to go anywhere in the region, even, to make us talk about the issues that affect the whole region.”

Tommy Wells, a mayoral candidate and a current council member whose district includes much of Capitol Hill, said a new mayor would reset the relationship with Congress.

“Having the amount of corruption and scandal that’s occurred in the District government over the past two to three years does not help us at all,” Wells said in an interview at his Pennsylvania Avenue campaign office, just blocks from the Capitol. “You’ve got all this corruption there, and you’re going to trust our nation’s capital with even more autonomy?”

For his part, Gray said in an interview that the investigation into his campaign doesn’t reflect his management of the city.

“For us, it’s continuing to make the case: Here’s how we are a well-run city,” said Gray, who has presided over a real estate boom, a thriving local economy and a budget surplus. “The questions were around the campaign. Nobody has questioned the way I’ve run the city.”

Gray hasn’t shied away from standing up to Congress. He and six council members were once arrested outside the Capitol for protesting the 2011 budget deal.

But the mayor has managed to form a positive relationship with Issa. The two have worked together on some modest changes to the Height of Buildings Act, which preserves the city’s low skyline, as well as budget autonomy. Gray gained a powerful ally in Issa during the shutdown when the two joined forces to advocate allowing the city to tap its finances even while the government remained closed.

Issa said that despite Gray’s legal woes, the mayor is a good partner.

“As long as he is in office, we will work with him,” Issa said. “I have his cell number, he has mine. … We’ve never seen a sign of distraction. There is a difference between the distractions that the city may see and the distractions in the critical legislation we’re working on.”

In Washington, the Democratic mayoral primary normally serves as a de facto general election because Republicans rarely field a viable candidate. But the city is facing the potential of its first competitive general election in recent memory now that council member David Catania — a Republican turned independent — will compete in the race this fall.

Catania’s entrance in the general election is designed to tap into the city’s substantial anti-Gray sentiment, so even if the mayor wins on Tuesday, his legal troubles — and their potential impact on congressional oversight — won’t be put to rest.

Former Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican who supported Washington’s quest for voting rights, said Gray’s saving grace in Congress may be a general sense that the city is still managed effectively, even if the mayor’s ethics are under scrutiny.

“The city is still pretty well-run,” Davis said. “It is a far cry from the basket case it was 20 years ago. [Gray] got caught up in a scandal of how he got elected, but it hasn’t really impacted the government. By itself, that hasn’t brought the city down in the eyes of Congress.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misattributed a statement to Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton. The statement was from a spokesperson in her office. It also incorrectly reported that the 2011 budget deal banned the cityfrom spending its own money on needle-exchange programs.